I just have to say as part time copy editor, this makes me cry a little. Or maybe I'm just dealing with my indecisive side completely being overloaded by the cascade of choices these "or"s promise.I'd like to see what the order sheet for this cake said that could have possibly produced this.

It's a pity that the person taking the order isn't necessarily the person who is producing the finished product.

Better yet- it's amazing that they can't EXPLAIN the order to others. As if explanation was so difficult in itself that they could justify taking the rest of the day off because that slip of paper they half-assed filled out really sapped their energy.

What in the world??? Really, why can't we have decorators with brains to at least think "I don't think this is what they meant. Maybe I should call to make sure before I put the words in icing on this beautiful cake". It's that simple people!

i HATE that goop on the edges! blech. i know a certain store that loves to use that design ( they will remain nameless...*cough*) but blech. it looks like a three year old was allowed to try and frost the cake! although with all those or's maybe it WAS a three year old! eek!

This hurts my head. I keep trying to make some logic to how they got to this. I can see placing the order, "just put 'Happy Birthday' Joanna and Ernie or Ernie and Joanna or something." I can even see it being a joke about an ongoing argument over who gets top billing: Joanna & Ernie or Ernie & Joanna. But even with both of those options, I can't see how they got there. Excedrin please?

I can see how the ors could be construed as numbers....but that doesn't make any sense either...

Don't hate the wreckerators everyone...they make funnies to brighten up your day...as I see it, we should love the wreckerators...celebrate them...and laugh till we cry over their inability to follow simple directions...

This has turned into an office controversy. We actually saved the image and blew it up on Photoshop and touched it up to try to determine if it was "or" or "87". And we're still inconclusive. The 8 strongly resembles the o in Joanna, which had us leaning more toward "or" but the r in Ernie doesn't resemble the 7 at all.

This has lead to the conclusion that it's really "o7"...maybe they're 2/3 of a secret agent and they haven't quiiiite earned that license to kill yet? Okay, now we're stretching.

I remember being waited on by a trainee at a Macy's store. Her supervisor kept telling her to put her initials on my coupon. The trainee kept asking "What?" Again . . . initial the coupon . . . write your initials on the coupon. Finally the trainee says, I don't know what that means.

I'm pretty sure it's "or" written in script, not "87" or "89". If you exaggerate the loop to connect "o" to any other lowercase letter in script, you'd wind up with something that can be misread as an "8". The "r", to me, is how I was taught to do a lower case "r" in script. At least initially. Then I was informed by other teachers that script isn't supposed to be angular and blocky.

Regardless, can we all agree the placement is awful and the design is gag inducing?

Hi Folks. Here's what happened. Someone typed the order in, and those were supposed to be ampersands, and when the text was sent to the person making the cake, the ampersand character turned into a "control" character and 7, the two keys which have to be pressed to make an ampersand. It often happens, when transferring typed files from one program to another (like Word into some email editor) that special characters get shown as other things because different text editors use different specs to represent them.

Note to self: The next time I have to order a cake for more than two people, make all decisions regarding wording beforehand AND be absolutely clear on the order form. Unless I'm feeling snarky and secretly wishing for a wreck, that is.

Word verification: ingsty, the adjective form of the word formed from ink + angst, which may be applicable here...

1) 87 what? 87 years old?? by the time you're 87 i'd say it's fairly unlikely to find two people turning 87 at about the same time

2) 1987, the year they were born...when is the last time you had a birthday cake with the year you were born plastered all over it?? Not "happy 22nd birthday" "I'll just throw '87' all over it and let other people figure it out.. MATH!!! ha ha ha!"

3) None of this explains the double appearance of the two names in the two different orders.

Maybe the "or" in the middle was supposed to go in the first line, so it was supposed to say "Joanna or Ernie or Ernie or Joanna." Still inexplicable but at least makes the number of "or"s vaguely appropriate and the grammar reasonable. Or, since they do look a bit like ampersands, maybe it was "Joanna & Ernie & Ernie & Joanna."

I actually don't mind the border, which looks fun for a kid. (But plastic balloons: ugh.)

The two versions of the same pair of names aside (that is bad enough, but let's pass over that for a moment) ... there are too many "or"s. And an extra comma. Or one too few commas and two too many "or"s. Or something, comma.

I'm pretty sure those are neither "or"s nor numbers. They're an attempt at fancy, cursive ampersands (the '&' symbol). Go to images.google.com and search for "ampersand" for lots of examples of the extreme variation in style of this particular symbol.

Hello, my name is Joanna and my ex-boyfriend's name is Ernie. Although our birthdays are at opposite ends of the year and we haven't dated in about ten years (in fact, he's married and expecting his first child in three weeks), at least five people from our old circle have messaged me about this page. Too funny!

Now that I know the "or" is actually a botched ampersand, I'm finding its resemblance to "or" even funnier, because the ampersand sign comes from "et," the Latin word for "and." OK, maybe that's only funny for someone who's spent way too much time reading dead languages.

Even if they are supposed to be ampersands, why "Joanna, Ernie & Ernie & Joanna"? Are there two Joannas and two Ernies? And there is still the mystery of the extra amersand (or whatever it is) floating off to the right side.

I agree, "Joanna & Ernie or Ernie & Joanna" could be a joke about which name in a couple gets precedence. That may have been the intent. Which somehow got grossly misinterpreted, of course. I really don't think we can argue that SOME of those squiggles are ampersands and others, the word "or" -- especially when one of them is quite clearly a comma.

Hehehe! This is just too good. It took me a moment to find the far right side "or." That little bugger looks to be trying to escape the mess. I'm guessing the person who ordered the cake kept repeating the names to be on it and couldn't decide who'd get top billing, so the decorator did their best to comply. Like others have mentioned: At least there are sprinkles.

I'm pretty sure OR should be removed from this cake maker's vocabulary. Clearly s/he is confused about what it means, or at the very least, when to use it.

*******

Found you through the Weblog Awards. Congrats on kicking booTAY! (I read up on the controversy thing. I agree with you guys, I think maybe in a different category people would have responded better to the number of votes you received. ...Or probably not.)

Holy penmanship, Batman! --all this controversy!!Are those ampersands, or "or"s?"or"s or "87"s?I say, WHO CARES?!That cake is butt-ugly, and should only be served from the bottom of a deep, dark dumpster. At night. After borrowing blindfolds from that other cakewrecker (see previous cake)to hand out to the guests... Poor, poor, Jo and/or Ernie!!

I started developing microsoft word cake decorating software which includes spell check, if only I could have acted faster I could have saved this poor sap the pain of being crucified in front of such a large forum

Once upon a time I actually thought that people wouldn't be so stupid as to make mistakes like this. Since finding this site, I have discovered that I was very foolish to think that way...sad for humanity, but great for entertainment!

I'm going to say it's "or", based on an analysis of the other handwriting on the cake. Look at the "o" in "Joanna". It has that big loop on the top. And the "r" in "Ernie" resembles the form of the "r" in "or". I do think it says "or". Why, oh why, I don't know.

But even if it was a squiggle, an ampersand, an "87" or whatever, that would not explain the repetition of the names.

You'd be really surprised at how easy it is to make these kinds of mistakes. I was a cake decorator for nearly 6 years (a damn good one), and when you're stressed out and trying to read someone else's random scribbles on an order form, the brain does weird things. I once made a graduation cake and wrote exactly what was on the order form: "Cong Eric Class of '07." Silly me didn't even think that "Cong" could be short for "Congratulations." The customer was NOT amused, nor very understanding.

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